In honor of another school year ended, we, who call ourselves permanent residents and bona fide Charlottesvillians, undertook the task of revisiting the neighborhood we usually dare not mention, neither as drinking spot, nor acceptable hangout. We are referring, of course, to the Corner. Sophomoric as it may be, the block has its draws in […]
Friday, June 1 Andy Waldeck and the C-villians. The celebrated instrumentalist and singer is backed by an equally talented band. $8, 9pm. Gravity Lounge, 103 S. First St., off the Downtown Mall. 977-5590. Caroline Spence. This fresh-faced teenager sings songs that pierce the heart with their poignancy and honesty. $5-7, 6pm. Gravity Lounge, 103 S. […]
Dear Ace: The Foxfield Races designates a charitable organization to receive proceeds from its semiannual steeplechase races, but how much are the Foxfield folks actually giving to charities?—Horace O. Coors. Horace: Boy, you’re even more cynical than Ace, huh? Still, Ace supposes you have some justification. Those white-glove-wearing, julep-sipping, portfolio-having derbyites over at Foxfield surely […]
In August 2004, Derek Breen went upstairs to check his e-mail. “My bedroom was right above the hammock shop,” he remembers. At the time, just over a year into his Twin Oaks tenure, he was managing the hammocks business, the community’s biggest income source. Pier One was a longstanding and very sizable client—representing up to […]
Devon Sproule, perennial favorite of the Charlottesville folk scene, just might be Twin Oaks’ best-known local alum. (She grew up there.) But she’s hardly the only ex-Oaker, as they call themselves, to settle in Charlottesville. With the community only 35 miles away from our relatively cosmopolitan city, perhaps it’s a natural that Oakers leaving the […]
… Plenty of outsiders come. They’ll pull off I-64 at Shannon Hill, then follow the calm roads a few miles north into Louisa County. Along the way is the usual rural mix of trailers, tiny frame houses, more prosperous-looking farms.
music Catching a band at the beginning of a tour, when they’ve got a new album and they’re debuting songs onstage, one can often sense the freshness the group brings to the material. The day before this gig, London-based guitar pop band the Clientele had released the sublime God Save the Clientele, a lush collection […]
stage Let me start with a confession. No matter how often I read or see it, I can’t find much depth in this 60-year-old classic of the American stage. Its conflict between the wayward-but-vulnerable Southern belle Blanche DuBois and her meat-slinging, wife-beating caveman of a brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, strikes me as a collision of gothic […]
music Like many a band’s first “official” album, Dr. Dog’s 2005 release Easy Beat was a furious and arresting microcosm of everything they had to say. Or at the least, listening to We All Belong, their 2007 follow-up, I got that sense. Where Easy Beat had a sense of urgency, a need to stomp their […]
cd Only a year old and Kate Starr’s three-piece band has already reached the finals of Lollapalooza’s Last Band Standing contest, opened for acclaimed shoegazers Asobi Seksu and played New York City nearly as many times as they’ve played Charlottesville. Starr has an impressive array of artsy publicity photos, and she’s built a distinct image […]